Possession of the Spirit: Contested Discourse and the Construction of Identity among Lay Catholic Devotional Groups in and around the City of Cork

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Constitutional and Congressional Requirements Directing Public Lands Decisionmaking

15 pages. Contains references

Constitutional and Congressional Requirements Directing Public Lands Decisionmaking

15 pages. Contains references

A Framework Analysis of the Open Source Software Development Paradigm

Open Source Software (OSS) has become the subject of much commercial interest of late. Certainly, OSS seems to hold much promise in addressing the core issues of the software crisis, namely that of software taking too long to develop, exceeding its budget, and not working very well. Indeed, there have been several examples of significant OSS success stories—the Linux operating system, the Apache web server, the BIND domain name resolution utility, to name but a few. However, little by way of rigorous academic research on OSS has been conducted to date. In this study, a framework was derived from two previous frameworks which have been very influential in the IS field, namely that of Zachman’s IS architecture (ISA) and Checkland’s CATWOE framework from Soft Systems Methodology (SSM). The resulting framework is used to analyze the OSS approach in detail. The potential future of OSS research is also discussed

The impact of social network sites on the consumption of cultural goods

Social Media has altered the way in which people interact, collaborate and communicate. In particular, social network sites (SNS) have grown tremendously popular and are creating new forms of Web use. The social interactive nature of SNS enables people to share cultural tastes and content across the Web. Cultural goods are hedonic experiential goods and are used in SNS as a means of acquiring and maintaining friendship networks amongst other purposes. Music, in particular, is discussed, shared, and sampled across SNS. The objective of this research is to understand the impact of social networking software on the consumption of cultural goods. Specifically we investigate the affect the functional affordances of SNS have on the consumption tasks for discovering cultural goods (music). This research-in-progress paper defines SNS, outlines the key affordances of SNS, and describes the nature of cultural goods consumption. This is followed by a description of the research objectives, proposed research model, and planned activities for the next stage of the research project

Exploring the affordances of social networking sites: an analysis of three networks

Social network sites (SNS) are becoming increasingly important, both for individuals and organizations. These systems have affected social and cultural activities, work practices, and in particular the ways in which we discover, share and consume information goods. The functionality of SNS is emergent, shaped by user appropriation choices. In this paper, affordances are proposed as a way to understand the potential uses and future evolution of SNS. Affordances describe the characteristics of an interactive system which suggests how the system should be used. The objective of this study is to explore the affordances of SNS. The study comprises an inventory of the affordances of three popular SNS. The study reveals a diverse collection of software features which afford user behaviour in six areas of activity: social connectivity, social interactivity, profile management, content discovery, content sharing and content aggregation. The findings of the study provide a rich foundation for future research on user appropriation of SNS, the future evolution of SNS, and the design of SNS systems